Curious on your thoughts on sargassum season. When tons and tons of sargassum wash up on gulf Coast shores. Do you like it or hate it? I personally love it. So many different animals, some of which are found only in sargassum, make it worth it for me. What do you think…
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Same! Looks like a HUGE opportunity for tons of different species living around. As I live in Europe, I am quite far from the Coast, so I’m only dreaming of going there in the Sargassum season.
Don’t know what the ‘locals’ think, though.
I honestly love nature, so I would quit the beach tine to go and observe there!
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I don’t live there, but what would be bad about such a thing?
It smells horrible when it decomposes, completely covers the beach and often makes beaches just not fun for most people.
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I’d consider that a plus.
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I agree
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It sounds like you haven’t been there. I have – Dominican Republic. A layer of sagassum weed is the beach equivalent of a heavy algal bloom in a lake. Those also make the lake not fun, but that doesn’t make them a good thing for nature or naturalists. It’s eutrophication, just with a macroalgae instead of a microalgae.
Also, as Mongabay recently reported, the “sargassum season” is the result of a large-scale shift in the ocean ecosystem. It’s not good!
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Sargassum is awesome. On our planktonic drift dives, large weedlines are a surefire thing we will see some sick crits that evening, or at the very least a few species of flying fish or pelagics.
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